City of Lakes
by Amy-Violet
Summary: During an extended layover on the flight home from Los Angeles, Blaine tries to cheer Sam up. It doesn't really work. Takes place during City of Angels. Canon-compliant.


**A/N: To all my fellow Blam shippers, before you get mad at me for how this ends, note the "canon compliant" tag and consider yourselves warned.**

It was supposed to be a one hour, fifty-two-minute layover in Minneapolis. But the one hour, fifty-two minute mark had passed more than an hour and fifty-two minutes ago—some mechanical issue, apparently—and now the gate attendant was announcing that the connecting flight to Columbus was going to be delayed at least another ninety minutes.

Blaine dropped into the seat next to the one Sam was slouched in. "Great. Just freaking great."

Sam shrugged. "What does it matter? What do we have to get home to?"

"Sam, please don't say again that you let everyone down. It wasn't your fault. Throat Explosion was really good and—"

"And we weren't. _I_ wasn't. Mr. Schue trusted me, and look where that got us. I _told_ him I wasn't Finn. God, why couldn't he have put _you_ in charge? I should've told him to! Then we would have won for sure."

"Okay." Blaine stood and looked down at Sam. "Stand up."

"Why?" Sam asked, not really looking at him.

"Because maybe moving around a little will help your mood."

"My mood isn't the problem, Blaine. My problem is that I—"

"Let everyone down, I got it. I mean, you're wrong, but me telling you you're wrong obviously isn't having any impact."

"And moving around _will_ have an impact?"

"Maybe not, but it's all I can think of. Come on." He stood umoving, staring down at Sam, until eventually Sam relented and stood up.

Blaine was at least as upset as Sam was about having lost at Nationals, but he was determined to get Sam's mind off it—if that meant getting his own mind off it, that would just be a bonus. So he kept up a steady commentary on the sights, such as they were.

There was an art exhibit in one of the walkways, but Sam barely glanced at any of the pieces, even when Blaine read the blurbs out loud. Finally, though, Sam did take a little bit of interest in a sculpture of a fish toward the end. "Is this supposed to be a catfish, do you think?" he asked.

It was kind of an abstract, and Blaine wasn't even sure if it was supposed to be any particular kind of fish. The description wasn't any help. "I don't know. If those things on the side of its face are supposed to be whiskers, then maybe." They didn't look much like whiskers, Blaine thought, or whatever the whisker-like things on catfish were actually called. Then he thought of something else. Weren't catfish, like, a southern thing? "Do you think they even have catfish in Minnesota?"

"They have ten thousand lakes here, dude. They must have every kind of fish."

It was the most engaged Sam had been on any non-Nationals topic, so Blaine didn't argue that Minnesota couldn't possibly have _every_ type of fish. They didn't even have any saltwater, so that eliminated a ton of species right there. Instead he said, "You know, I heard that ten thousand is an _understatement_ and there are actually like twice that many lakes."

"Wow. So, yeah, definitely they have catfish. Hey, why do you think—"

"Hold on a sec," Blaine interrupted. His phone was vibrating, and he's was hoping it was Kurt, even though it was just a text and he had asked Kurt to call so he could tell him about Nationals. Blaine could have just texted about it, but he really wanted to _talk_ to Kurt.

The text wasn't from Kurt, though. It was from Wes Montgomery, congratulating him on New Directions' second-place "win." Wes was a super nice guy and obviously meant it sincerely rather than snarkily, but Blaine couldn't bring himself to reply at the moment, and anyway taking the time to do so would be rude to Sam. He slid the phone back into his pocket and said, "Sorry about that."

"It wasn't from Kurt?" Sam asked.

"No. I'm sure he'll call me when he gets a chance."

Sam put his hand on Blaine's arm, and Blaine thought for a minute he was going to pull him in for a hug, but instead he just sort of awkwardly rubbed his elbow and said, "Yeah."

It was kind of disappointing, actually, not to be pulled in for that hug. Even though he was the one who was supposed to be cheering up Sam. "So, uh, what were you about to say? Before my phone..."

"Uh... I don't remember. I guess it wasn't important."

"Sorry."

"You're not the one who should be sorry, dude."

"Sam." Blaine touched Sam's elbow this time, basically the exact Sam gesture Sam had made a second ago. "I keep telling you, it's not your fault we didn't win."

Sam looked confused for a few seconds, then sad. But, like, a different kind of sad from how he'd been at the gate. Blaine wouldn't have known how to describe it. Sam laughed—sadly—and said, "I had actually sort of forgotten about that."

"Oh! Well...good." Apparently Blaine's distraction plan had been working—he just had to get back to it. Unfortunately they were past the end of the art exhibit, and the only "sights" nearby now were fast food. "Look, a Burger King," he tried.

"Are you hungry?"

"No. You?"

"No."

Blaine looked around to see what else they were near. "Caribou Coffee," he read out loud. "I've never seen one of those before; probably a local chain. I mean, it sounds pretty Minnesotan, right? If they actually have caribou here, which...do they?"

"You want some coffee?"

Blaine hadn't been thinking that, but the suggestion struck him as excellent. So they stood in line and Blaine ordered coffee, and he asked Sam if he wanted any and Sam surprised him by saying yes. Sam rarely drank coffee, so when he did, the caffeine usually made him very bouncy and talkative.

Not today, however. Today the only apparent effect the coffee had on Sam was making him announce about twenty minutes later that he had to pee.

"Well, it should be easy to find a bathroom at an airport," Blaine said. He hadn't been able to get a distracting conversation going again, but now he thought of something that made him laugh and would probably amuse Sam too. "You know what would be funny? If we went to the same one Larry Craig used."

Sam gave him a blank stare. "The _Curb Your Enthusiasm_ guy? Why would that be funny?"

"No, that's Larry David. Larry Craig was a senator. You don't remember?"

"Sorry. I don't know the name of every dude who ever senated."

It really was unrealistic to expect Sam to remember who Larry Craig was, or possibly even to have heard of him at the time. Blaine didn't follow politics back then either; the only reason he knew the story was that he'd overheard his mom tell his dad, "Some day your son is going to come out to you, and if you push him back in the closet he'll just end up like Larry Craig," so of course he had immediately googled Larry Craig.

"Well, he was a senator from Idaho. One time he was here in this very airport and he got arrested for trying to have sex with another dude in the bathroom!"

"Dude!"

"I know!" Blaine grinned.

"Wait, why is a guy getting arrested for being gay funny?"

"No, he wasn't arrested for being gay, it was for trying to hook up in an airport bathroom!"

"But I bet lots of straight people do that too."

"Yeah, I guess so, but that's not even the point."

"What is the point?"

"He was a Republican senator and of course he was supposedly straight; I mean, he was married to a woman, and..."

"He could have been bi, though. That's a thing. Maybe everyone just assumed he was straight because he happened to be married to a woman, and maybe he just let everyone think that because the guy he was in love with was engaged to someone else anyway, so what would even be the point of coming out, but then they were stuck at the airport together, and even though it was wrong because his friend was engaged to another guy they just wanted each other super bad and there was nowhere else to go so they did it in the bathroom."

Blaine had no idea how to respond to that. As a matter of fact, he had no idea what Sam was talking about. "Um..."

"I know you're not supposed to do it in the airport bathroom. I know maybe the cops didn't have any choice but to arrest them, like maybe if other people complained or whatever. But I don't get what's funny about it."

"Um..." For a minute Blaine couldn't remember what he thought was funny about it either. "But he was a Republican, see? And he always voted against gay rights stuff. And I guess he could have been a closeted bi guy and not a closeted gay guy, but the man he tried to have sex with wasn't someone he was in love with, it was a cop. Craig tapped his foot or something and then when the press found out, Craig said he actually wasn't soliciting sex, he just had a 'wide stance' ... though that doesn't explain why he pled guilty..." Blaine was back to not remembering why he had found the story funny to begin with.

"Oh," Sam said, although Blaine doubted he had followed that jumbled mess of nonsense. "Did his wife leave him?"

"I don't know. He had to leave the Senate though."

"Oh. Well, I guess if he committed a crime... What about the cop? Did he get fired?"

"No, no, the cop was..."

"Oh, the cop was entrapping him. Right, I get it. Well, I'll be careful in there then, I guess."

Blaine forced a laugh. "Yeah. Be sure to use a narrow stance. Then, uh..." He checked the time on his phone. "I guess when you're done we should get back to the gate."

Sam hesitated, looking like he was trying to formulate something to say. But when he did answer, it was just, "Right."

 **A/N: I got the idea for this when I saw that "stranded at the airport" was one of the themes for Blam Week this year. But obviously it isn't a Christmas fic, so it's not really _for_ Blam Week. (If it were, it would be late!)**


End file.
